Conservative coalition backs plan to overhaul immigration

April 4, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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A collection of groups with different perspectives came together Thursday in Costa Mesa to discuss their common goal of immigration reform. Speaking on behalf of the Lincoln Club of Orange County, President Bob Loewen said, "Our focus is how to prevent future illegal immigration." JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Tim Celek, pastor of The Crossing Church in Costa Mesa, shared his views on immigration, saying Thursday, "It's important to treat all people with dignity." Listening at left is Jason Resnick with Western Growers. A collection of groups with different perspectives came together Thursday in Costa Mesa to discuss their common goal of immigration reform. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Costa Mesa police Sgt. Vic Bakkila joined a collection of groups Thursday with different perspectives to discuss their common goal of immigration reform. He told the audience his department has no position on a path to citizenship and his officers don't ask about citizenship. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

A collection of groups with different perspectives came together Thursday in Costa Mesa to discuss their common goal of immigration reform. Speaking on behalf of the Lincoln Club of Orange County, President Bob Loewen said, "Our focus is how to prevent future illegal immigration." JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

COSTA MESA – A coalition of Republicans, business leaders, police and pastors announced their support for immigration overhauls Thursday, another sign of support that's been growing nationwide since the November election.

The group's news conference comes as a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, dubbed the Gang of Eight, hammers out a bill that would legalize the status of most of the 11 million people in the country without required documents.

"Our congressional representatives need to hear from the many conservative voices who support immigration reform," said Jason Resnick, vice president of Western Growers, which represents farmers in California and Arizona. Western Growers says there are 1.2 million hired farmworkers in the country, about 60 percent of whom lack proper documents. (Editor's note: The Register originally reported Resnick's citation of 1.8 million farmworkers, but Western Growers subsequently corrected that number.)

The range of interests represented at the event include employers who want employees, Republicans who want a share of the 71 percent of Latinos who voted for President Barack Obama, police who want immigrants to feel comfortable talking to law enforcement, and pastors who want more dignity for those in the country illegally.

"It would be wrong for us to see them only as a source of labor," said Tim Celek, pastor at The Crossing Church in Costa Mesa. "It would be wrong to only benefit from them while they remain in the shadows. They're good enough to work, but they're not good enough to vote?"

However, six of the eight representatives on the panel did not share Celek's call for a path to citizenship. While none voiced opposition to such a provision, most said they had not taken a position on the issue.

"We're not being drawn into that question," said Bob Loewen, president of the Lincoln Club. He said the group's primary concern is with having aboveboard, free-market relations between employers and workers. The Lincoln Club, whose membership is primarily business people, put itself in the Republican vanguard of the current push for immigration overhauls two years ago, when it unveiled a three-point plan that included a path to legal residency.

Reluctance to embrace a path to citizenship hints at the challenge an immigration overhaul bill may face in Congress. While the Gang of Eight's current draft includes such a provision, there's concern that it could have difficulty in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

That's what prompted former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez to launch a Super PAC, Republicans for Immigration Reform. The group was set up to help GOP Congress members who support immigration overhauls fend off primary challenges in 2014. Gutierrez visited Irvine last month to pitch overhauls to the well-heeled GOP New Majority.

Thursday's event was particularly noteworthy for being held in Costa Mesa and for including representatives of the city's police and Chamber of Commerce. Eight years ago, the city began making headlines for a series of moves that made life more difficult for people here illegally, including closing a day-labor center, making it a crime to solicit employment on the street and bringing a federal immigration officer into the jail.

Today, that officer is no longer there and there is no enforcement against soliciting employment on the street.

Former Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor, who in 2006 proposed training police to check the immigration status of those arrested for suspected felonies, this year became the first state Assembly member to endorse the Lincoln Club's immigration overhaul plan.

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